Bye bye Istanbul

Day 121 - June 14th

It’s our last day in Istanbul.  We have loved it here and I hope we will return.  Our neighbourhood catered for everything.  Interesting old architecture, delicious local cheese Burak’s, which Taran and I guzzled everyday, the ‘cool’ Lebanese café round the corner, laundry at Elif although some of our clothes seemed to go missing.  (I was wondering whether I would then see them in one of the many vintage clothing stores on our street. ) The stray cats, which are so much a part of daily life here.  The friendly local school caretaker, who let us shoot hoops in the school yard every day and fishing on the Bosphorus.  We have also enjoyed seeing Ness and Hilal and the twins who have been great local hosts to us on a couple of days. 

Cats everywhere

Our street

Local artisanal shops

This morning we wandered around for the last taste of the city and visited Istanbul Modern Art Gallery.  Here are some of our favourite works:

Navigating out of the city was bravely mastered by Kelty who kept his cool as the satnav took us down extremely steep, narrow and twisting streets and on to the motorway to Bulgaria.

Bye bye Turkey and hello Bulgaria. (apologies to the photographer as I switched off his phone so he missed the perfect shot of the mosque)